


Ability

by Histoire



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Gen, Pidge has a power, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Pre-Season/Series 01, but I really can't find an accurate tag for it, idk if that tag is correct but I hope it is, sort of, the ending isn't great in general
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2018-11-11 07:43:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11143959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Histoire/pseuds/Histoire
Summary: All throughout her life, Katie has been able to see things; some make sense, but most are downright impossible to interpret. Her visions never involve her, but allow her to take a glimpse into the futures of the people around her. Because of her lack of comprehension of a majority of the visions, Katie doesn't attempt to change their course, but the coming of a vision may just change her perspective on her ability.





	1. When it All Began

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note, I'll mostly be referring to Pidge as 'Katie' for a majority of this fic because it's set before Shiro and the Holts' journey to Kerberos. They'll be dropped in every few times here and there because I'll be using it as her nickname. Because of this, there's a very high chance that the rest of Voltron, with the exception of Shiro, will not appear. With enough luck, maybe I'll be able to toss in a mention here and there.

When she was very young, Katie felt a thing come across her. It came like a jolt, as if someone had suddenly pulled her arm, only there was no pain, and no one had actually touched her. At that time, she was in the kitchen sitting in her highchair, unsupervised, because her parents had a few things to attend to and thought that it would be okay to leave her there for just a bit. No sooner had they left did it appear before her, a vision. As her sight blurred, Katie felt the seat below her melt away, and she saw herself falling into the nothingness below her, squeezing her eyes shut as she braced herself for the descent.

But Katie didn’t fall. She stayed suspended in the air, floating above the wide expanse of black underneath her. Opening her eyes, she realised that something was in front of her. It was a boy, head full of brown hair, thin circle framed glasses resting upon his nose. His face was familiar, though Katie couldn’t place it at that time. The boy dashed across the inky darkness, leaping and screaming. Then, though unprovoked, the boy fell, his yell echoing in the black space. It was unnatural, the way his body curved when he stumbled. Instead of falling forward, he instead fell backwards, arms reaching forward in an attempt to stabilise himself by grabbing onto something, though he found nothing in front of him, his feet flying upward in the same manner. The whole affair really looked more like he had slipped on something that had caused him to fall, but before Katie could wholly comprehend the situation before her, she was brought back into reality, her highchair materialising below her again, the kitchen filling in the blank slate of her vision as her sight became more focused. No time had even passed.

Though it had all come to her so abruptly, something in Katie told her to anticipate it, that it would come true and to not investigate it, so she accepted it without question, eyeing the kitchen doorway and watching out for the brown-haired glasses-wearing boy she had been shown in her mind. And then it happened, the boy’s face appeared at the door, a wide grin plastered on it. He waved a plastic toy in his hand, shrieking foreign words that Katie didn’t understand as he ran around the small space of the kitchen. It all confused Katie really, the boy didn’t seem to be falling, so was this really the right boy? She didn’t have to wait long for her answer.

With a quick exclamation, the boy stepped onto a small puddle of water on the kitchen floor and slipped, all four limbs facing skyward as he let go of his toy. It was a comical scene, and Katie couldn’t help but laugh at the poor boy’s misery, though she had already seen it once. This event is remembered quite fondly by both Holt siblings as one of the oldest memories of their interactions both children could remember. However, while Matt mostly recalls the event as a coincidence, Katie remembers otherwise. When the incident is brought up, the first thing she thinks of is her time in the black room, the place where all her troubles first started.

As Katie grew up, the visions came to her more often, scenes of toppling stacks of books and flying fishes that were all accompanied by the same voice that told her not to question, but to just accept as fact. Though strange, all of them made sense to her, the sight of a her brother weighed against a book was a sign that he was going to sit for a test, the image of tipping buckets filled with money signalled the start of a more financially unstable time for her parents. However, as far as she could remember, Katie’s ability never directly involved her, only the lives of the people around her. Yeah sure, some of them still affected her (recall the financial instability that plagued her parents, which also impacted her), but in the end, none of what she saw was about her. As Katie grew older, she also stopped listening to the voice, doing what it told her not to do instead: to question.

Katie had never been someone to just blindly follow. She was brought up by Sam and Colleen Holt, both of whom were not only geniuses, but also highlighted the importance of knowing the truth and to actively seek at, the importance of clarifying doubt, and at that time, Katie was filled to the brim with doubt. So she put her skills to the test. At the sight of her next vision, the girl filled her head with questions that blocked out the voice, loud questions that glared and gleamed, requesting things that the visions didn’t give.

‘When will this take place?’

‘How will this impact me?

‘Can I change this event?’

_‘What does this even mean in the first place?’_

It was around this time that all of the visions became more unclear. Katie would see fishes jumping out of the water and assume that someone was getting married, only to discover that it was harking the arrival of a child of one of their close relatives. Everything stopped making sense. Her visions became more erratic, more volatile, and they left the young girl floundering for answers. The fragile connection between Katie’s visions and Katie’s reality snapped, her visions no longer in accordance with her life. Things she saw in the black room wouldn't happen, wouldn't become real like it usually did, but no matter what happened one thing was always constant.

The voice.

The voice that commanded her to just be patient, to wait for it to happen. But how could she? How could Katie believe in this? There was no science, no facts, and for all she knew, she was just delusional and her mind was drawing connections between her hallucinations and real life. Such was the irony that Katie lived with for over three years, her search to understand instead confusing her further and further, until nothing was clear to her anymore. She was frustrated, she was tired, and after three years of searching and finding nothing, Katie was beside herself. So she did something she usually wouldn’t do.

She ran away.

Katie stopped caring. She shut out the visions, closed her eyes when her mind brought her to the room, and silenced the voice in her head. She forced herself to just give up, to stop trying to comprehend her mysterious ability. At that time, Katie had told herself that she was just angry, that it wasn’t her fault for being unable to understand, it was the visions that were too complicated, so she had to give up. But Katie knows the truth. She was scared, scared of how wild her visions had become, scared of how she couldn’t make sense of them, scared of the unknown. And who could blame her, she was just eight. And thankfully, her ability understood.

Like a shot of lightning, Katie suddenly stopped having visions. It happened a year later, and terrified her at first, something she had grown up with for so long had abruptly disappeared, leaving her with unanswered questions and lingering uncertainty. However, it wasn’t difficult to adjust to. Katie didn’t randomly get distracted by the visions anymore, and she never had to contemplate the things she saw again, so in retrospect, this development had really helped her more than it had harmed her. Besides, it was really what she wanted in the first place, to be left alone by her ability, right?

It really didn’t take Katie long to forget about her ability, forget that it even existed in the first place, and she was fine with it. Her life was unaffected by the disappearance of her visions, and Katie didn’t mind at all. In fact, she’d say that it was even better, what with her frustrations over the visions gone with the passing of its source. After nine long years of visions, four of which was spent in scepticism over them, Katie was finally free of them when she was ten, and now, at the age of twelve she hadn’t been bothered by them since. Truly, it was amazing to be finally free of her ability, free to enjoy life the way it was supposed to be; a surprise unspoilt by some stupid ability.

And Katie savoured it.

She savoured every blessed moment that came without the premonition of it, she savoured the shock of terrible events that she hadn’t predicted, but the thing she savoured most was the time when her father and brother had come home bearing good news, news that they would be participating in the launch to one of Pluto’s moons, the mission to Kerberos.

After participating in the celebratory party thrown impromptu when the announcement had been made, Katie shuffles up the stairs to embrace the comfort of her bed. Shutting the door behind her, she seals away the festivity behind her and finds herself in a pitch black room, alone. Though Katie is blind in the darkness, the room is one she is familiar with, and after walking ten steps forward, she flings herself in the same direction and is greeted by her bed. Excitement still bubbling in her, the teenager flips onto her back and squirms a bit until the sheets had swathed her comfortably. As Katie is about to shut her eyes and drift off, she suddenly feels her sheets dissolving away, the darkness of her room intensifying past feasible. Katie’s heart clenches in terror as she feels herself suspend in midair, like an ant trapped in honey. She knows what this feeling is.

Katie is having a vision.


	2. Prelude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi yes it took me a whole year to type 700 words

Katie tentatively opens her eyes.

Everything is exactly as she remembers it, the sensation strange, but not foreign. She’s floating lazily, suspended in the black space, no walls erected around her, yet feeling as though she had been trapped. Katie drifts for what feels like hours, the sound of her soft breathing her only companion. Her heart hammers away erratically in her chest, squeezing painfully with fear and anxiety. There is nothing to be seen in the darkness.

Katie is carried for a bit longer before anything happens. At perhaps around the third hour, two figures appear in the distance, their faces distorted past recognition. In the hands of the shorter; maybe younger, figure sits a beautiful toy ship, about an arm’s length long. Its hull is decorated in a deep navy blue, the tall masts a pure white, a red flag flying at the top of the tallest one. As she moves closer, Katie examines the intricate design, from every thin metal railing to the seamless paintwork. On the deck of the ship are three small figurines, and while she cannot identify the first one, the tallest of the three, she instantly recognises the others; it’s her father and brother.

Then, the figure moves. It hugs the ship closer to its chest as it slowly bends down. Setting it on the ground, the figure gets up to wave at the ship as it sets off into the dark unknown, red flag waving back. Barely ten minutes later, Katie sees a strange creature apparate into thin air. It’s about her size, and it’s definitely larger than the toy ship, comically small next compared to the creature. With a quick stroke, it positions itself under the ship, and jumps, its large mouth opening wide, crushing the ship with a painful, soundless, crunch, like a whale swallowing a meal. Katie’s eyes widen in shock, and she takes in a deep breath and tries to scream, but no sound comes out. Her cries are trapped in her thundering heart, reaching a crescendo as the creature snatches up the desecrated remains of the once handsome toy, gulping the whole thing down. Katie turns to the two figures, silently waiting, watching, begging for them to take action, but they are serene, seeing through the creature as if it were glass, as if they can’t even see it, as if it wasn’t even there.

The two figures then turn their backs to the creature, staring out into a different direction in the field of nothing. The shorter of the two walks away, vanishing into the deep blackness as the taller one suddenly collapses on its knees. It puts shadowy hands to a face that Katie can now place; the face of her mother. She makes terrible wails that stir an ache in Katie’s chest, but before she can go forward to comfort her mother, Katie feels a hand on her shoulder. She spins, coming face to face with her brother, fringe a little longer, eyes a little wider, height a little shorter. Then, as Matt opens his mouth, Katie hears something she hasn’t heard in the past two years.

“This is going to happen.”

Katie shakes her head in disbelief and lifts her hand to push the figure away, only for it to pass right through. Her heartbeat rises at an alarming rate as she tries to escape from the image of her brother, closing her eyes and telling herself that it is all a dream, nothing will come. And then she hears something she hasn’t heard before.

“Do something to stop it.”

Katie’s eyes snap open as she sucks in a gulp of air. In front of her, her brother blinks once, blinks twice, blinks thrice, and slowly morphs into her, hair spilling past the shoulders, glasses melting into dust, until they are mirror image; desperate, helpless, unconsolable. Into the eyes of her clone, Katie looks, watching the browns of her iris swirl with emotions she recognises; fear, anxiety, desolation. Her heart stills, but grow louder and louder, drumming a symphony into her ears. Katie reaches out; Katie’s clone reaches out, uncertain, doubtful, cautious. She blinks once, blinks twice, blinks thrice. Then, below her is the kiss of fresh linen, the embrace of a downy comforter, the hug of soft cushion. Katie’s vision spins, black fading to white, dream cast away by reality.

Katie lurches into the bright Sunday morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mirrors are a symbol of light, and reflect the world around us, holding a spiritual attachment to illumination, awareness, and enlightenment.

**Author's Note:**

> Note on the fish vision in paragraph 11, Pidge interpreted the vision as a sign of marriage because fishes are a symbol of devotion, however, her prediction turned out to be wrong because she didn't consider how fishes also symbolise fertility. Ah, this is just a quick clarification in case anyone was confused by this vision. I really love symbols and stuff so yeah I had to insert this into a fic where I had the opportunity to slide in tons of them.
> 
> Ah, side note, I have a tumblr. I'm hystoire, so feel free to pop by and talk about voltron with me, or send a prompt you'd like to see me write or something! It's also kinda empty so don't mind it aha


End file.
